Stephen Lawrence’s friend short-listed for victims’ commissioner role
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Duwayne Brooks, the friend of Stephen Lawrence who witnessed his murder, is in the running to be the next victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, pledging to “put people before politics”.
Mr Brooks, who was with Stephen on the night he was killed, is among a handful of short-listed candidates interviewed by Justice Secretary Alex Chalk to take up the job of representing and championing victims of crime. The post has been vacant since Dame Vera Baird resigned last September.
In an interview with The Telegraph, he said victims and witnesses to crime were still facing similar problems as he did in the aftermath of the murder of Stephen in April 1993.
Mr Brooks suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder and sought damages for negligence for his treatment as a suspect, rather than a witness. He won £100,000 compensation from the Metropolitan Police and an apology 13 years after the murder.
“Even what was happening back then and for years after is still happening to other victims and witnesses across the country. For me, that is sad,” he said.
‘Support and guidance’
But Mr Brooks, 48, believed he could “transcend religion, race, culture, sex or gender” and offer a different type of background and experience to his predecessors: Dame Vera, a former Attorney General and policing chief, and Baroness Newlove, now Lords deputy speaker whose husband was murdered by three youths.
“I can give victims confidence to come forward,” he said. “I am about making sure that people recover from that trauma and that the impact on your life doesn’t change your future.
“For me, as far as they were concerned I was going to go off the rails and would get into crime but I didn’t. That was because I had support and guidance. A lot of the people in the more deprived areas don’t have that support.
“It would be a great role to show how when you remove politics, when you put people before politics, you always have a great result.”
Mr Brooks was born to Jamaican parents and grew up in Deptford before studying engineering at college.
OBE for public and political service
Last weekend, he said he would have picked out in an identity parade Matthew White, who was named last month as the sixth suspect in the racist killing 30 years ago.
Brooks became a councillor for the Lib Dems in Lewisham in 2009 but joined the Tory party in 2018. He was awarded an OBE in 2015 for public and political service.
Mr Brooks described how as a councillor there had been a focus on rape, but there had been no online reports from the LGBT community until he organised a meeting with police.
“The reason they were not reporting it before was because they didn’t believe anyone was going to believe them. It changed the reporting. It’s the same thing I know I can bring as victims’ commissioner.”
